"You're devilish generous," growled Payne. "You know the old griffin doesn't propose to bag me unless you get hit."
"Is it possible," asked the German, catching a meaning in this raillery, "the second of an American duel is imprisoned if his principal is shot? I ask for information."
"You have come to the right shop now," said Lind. "He is, invariably. Some rather curious contretemps grow out of it. Duelling is very popular among us, very—especially with the fair sex," kissing his hand to an indefinite noun of multitude. "A great favorite being imprisoned for acting as second, the people took it up—elected him governor by an overwhelming majority. It was supposed, of course, he would pardon himself; but no: he was a Roman, the noblest Roman of them all. 'The prerogative of executive clemency,' he said, 'had already been grossly abused. It would ill repay the generous confidence of his constituents to exercise it in his own behalf and in order to escape the just penalty of the law.' He refused to pardon himself, and so served out his term in both offices."
This struck the German as something heroic.
"True, sir, true," said Lind: "rather inconvenient, however. When the legislature met, as it necessarily did, in the penitentiary, you could not tell a member from a convict. Rather awkward, you see, if the wrong body adjourned itself by mistake."
The party broke up late, and Mason, throwing off his coat, called for Webster's Quarto and Watson's Poetical Quotations, saying he would address his aunt in such an Orphic strain as would make her wig curl and ma'amselle's rouge-pot chalky. Watson's Poetical Quotations was not in the hotel; but with the big Quarto before him, arms akimbo, his legs spread out under the table, Mason went at his task, pausing to shout a passage at Payne, and swear it would liquefy the crystal of his aunt's frigid humor like a hot collar in July, or to scratch his head over some fickle-vowelled monosyllable that defied orthography; and the soft dark night deepened to the gray, lustreless morning.
An early marketer from Jeffersonville spread a rumor that R. Nettles was shot through the lungs, and poor little Sue read it in the paper an hour later. An eager reporter recognized the hotel-van from over the river, with a tarpaulin thrown over its contents. "Anything of Captain Mason's party?" he asked.
"Stout, rosy man, good deal o' gas?" asked the porter.
"Yes! yes! what of him?"